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Jack Abbot isn’t in Afghanistan this morning, as he eats a bowl of stale Fruit Loops at his kitchen counter. He’s been meaning to ask his complex about fixing the drain in his sink. Every time he’s in here, he’s reminded of that. No matter where else he is in his apartment, however, he’ll be reminded that he has one foot instead of two. Crazy to think a year ago, he still had two.
He gets through two bowls of cereal, and the barren hole in his stomach merely seems to increase, so he washes his dishes. Spends an exorbitant amount of time furiously scrubbing.
The front door clicks open, and closes.
There’s a rustle of paper bags before Robby appears in the kitchen.
“Got a little of everything,” Robby explains, like they’re still roommates in medical school and he’s just stocking up on ramen. “Fruits, veggies. Your Vitamin Cs, Ds, Bs, you-know-whats-its.”
Jack keeps scrubbing, humming in acknowledgement.
“Even got that instant lasagna you like, no meat. You know my opinion on the sodium count, but because I’m cool like that, I’m not going to lecture you.” Robby begins unloading. “Today.”
Jack stares at the rim of the clean bowl in his grip, getting lost in the hot water streaming over his hands. He rubs at it in broad, hypnotic circles. It’s helping him ignore the itch in his absent foot.
There’s more rustling, and creaking of cabinets.
Robby is putting away his groceries for him, after spending the whole morning shopping for him. In the back of his mind, Jack knows he should feel guilty about this. He reaches for the feeling and can’t locate it, actually guilty by the fear that takes its place. It’s a fear he’s adopted of not feeling like a real person. Maybe it’s true because Robby has to come over then, and shut off the tap.
“Ever think you’re the reason for your sink being broken?” Robby teases gently, leaning too close. Jack sets the bowl on the drying rack and manages, impossibly, to smirk at his friend.
“It’s revenge on my landlord.”
“Oh is that all.”
Robby tosses him a dish towel to dry his hands.
Jack follows his silent order.
Robby doesn’t ask him why he hasn’t gone house hunting. Money is one thing, and he might have enough of it if he would bother to simply look at the accounts, but hunting is another.
How can a man hunt on one leg? How can a man work for himself?
He knows men have, and can. He’s even instructed patients on how to.
He just knows he’s not cut out for it, not after everything. Not when he can barely take care of the warfield of his mind, let alone his body.
He isn’t cut out for this adjustment.
That’s that.
“Let me cook you something?” Robby insists, picking up the box of Fruit Loops. He scowls at the expiration date and gripes, “Jesus, Abbs, you couldn’t have waited for me to get back?”
Jack’s instinct to bite and nip is overwhelming, and he resists.
He knows Robby doesn’t mean anything by—this.
“Yeah, okay, I’m going to go take a bath I think.” He doesn’t clarify that it’s because he can’t rest on this prosthetic without feeling sore for longer than fifteen minutes, and Robby doesn’t have to ask. “Thanks for this,” he forces out with a smile, even more forced. “I mean it, brother.”
“You know I’ve got you.”
He told him that before the war, and apparently, he’s telling him after.
Jack makes a sound, and he can only hope it’s a grateful one.
Squirreled away in his bathroom, surrounded by grouty tiles on both wall and floor, he lets the water pour as he doffs his prosthetic. It’s difficult and his hands are trembling. He nearly tosses the damn thing against the wall once it’s off because what the fuck? He’s helped a hundred patients in-and-out of these things and now he’s struggling with his own? He supposes he’s never come at it from this angle, distracted by a throbbing pain in his leg, and combatting shaky hands.
A few curse words fall from his lips as he awkwardly shimmies out of his underwear.
This somehow takes longer than removing the leg.
There’s clattering in the kitchen, but Jack trusts Robby. Between the two, he’s the better cook and makes a mean matzo ball soup.
His stomach growls at the thought, from the reality that he hasn’t enjoyed Robby’s cooking for over a year. It’s a thought riddled with more guilt because he hadn’t even had the decency to miss it during the war. He was too busy in the trenches, fearful for all his comrades' lives. Holding his breath because if he let go of his breath, it might mean the difference between life and death.
The water is searing when he sinks into it impatiently.
He sucks in his gut, taut, in reaction to the hot sting.
This pain is better than the alternative.
He lets himself lower completely, and relaxes when the crippling heat soothes his freshly healed leg. He rubs at his thigh as he lets his thoughts drift to nothingness. The quiet is abruptly stifling.
Jack reaches for his iPad and turns on the radio, to the American Forces Network. A soft rambling from a posturing news anchor on the state of the military currently deployed, and the stack of casualties lining up after a week's work, oddly enough, keeps him from spiraling.
All the bodies he’s not there to revive; he needs to be aware of them.
He needs the pain of their loss to overwhelm his own.
It’s what he deserves for being the one to get out of there alive when he lost too many friends to earn that privilege. The bath turns cold too quickly, with these thoughts roiling around his head, and he only gets out a long time after its warmth has faded, when he realizes he’s been crying.
Robby doesn’t point out that his bath took two and a half hours.
He’s watching some fantasy film on Primetime, on Jack’s rusty couch with an empty bowl of soup resting right by his lap. He perks up when Jack emerges from the bathroom, pink and robed. He’s got one crutch tucked under an arm because if he has to stand on that prosthetic for another moment today, he knows he’ll have to punch the brick wall in his bedroom in retaliation.
“Hey, man. Got room for Long John Silver?”
Robby visibly relaxes and that sucks; he was expecting to be kicked out.
Jesus.
“Of course. Lemme heat up your soup for you.”
“I’m a grown man. I can heat up my own soup,” Jack tries to say with the least amount of bitchiness possible, but off the quirked brow he gets in response, he doubts it’s translated.
“That means if you fall, I’m allowed to laugh at you.”
“Yeah, and it’ll be really funny when you wake up in the middle of your own amputation surgery, courtesy of moi,” Jack cracks in warning, hobbling into the kitchen. The lights are too bright now, and the smell is so potent it’s making him dizzy. He’s not hungry now, despite earlier. Still, he gets to work filling a bowl with soup and microwaving it, even though Robby might’ve preached the benefits of stovetop reheating. He doesn’t have the patience for that, not anymore.
“I’d be sexy with a peg leg,” Robby announces, appearing in the archway of the kitchen. “You on the other hand, well, I think we better start shopping for a more Terminator-style fit for you.”
“Okay, you’re selling me,” Jack says, grumbling when he realizes he needs two hands to carry the bowl into the living room. He debates setting it down on the counter, but Robby simply takes it and carries it for him without asking. He appreciates it. Not having to voice any of this aloud.
When Jack is sitting on the couch, clean and warm, with a bowl of Robby’s infamous soup in his hands, he starts feeling better. Especially because Robby isn’t showing any signs of leaving.
He takes several careful sips of soup before Robby starts talking.
“You been doing your physical therapy?” he questions, feigning non-chalance.
Jack can play that game too. So, he shrugs.
“I did it at the hospital.”
“Okay, that was pre-prosthetic. I’m talking about your gait training. Your post transtibial mobility training,” Robby hits the nail on the head far too deliberately. “You been doing those?”
Jack’s lips twitch and he sets his soup down.
The hole in his stomach expands, and he feels vaguely ill.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been walking. I walk everyday.”
“I haven’t seen you wear that prosthetic for longer than thirty minutes, Jack.”
“I just got the thing.”
“That thing is your new leg. You’re going to be living with it for the rest of your life. You know as well as I do what the required wear-time is during your first few weeks of in-home therapy.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t your recovery and you’re not my doctor.”
Robby scrubs a hand over his eyes and replies with exhausted patience.
“You didn’t have a problem with the exercises at the hospital. You weren’t giving any of the nurses trouble then. I’m trying to understand, okay? If there’s any way I can help you, or maybe we can look into programs for you, if you feel more comfortable in a setting with—”
“Mike!” Jack all but explodes. “There’s no ‘we’ in this. I’m going to heal, and I don’t need a program or somewhere else to do it. You know how fucking hard it was to get released home early?”
Robby frowns, clicking his tongue.
Standing down has never exactly been his forte.
“If you don’t get on top of this, you’re not going to be able to keep practicing medicine. Not in the way you have been. Not in the way you want.”
He wants to scream.
Don’t you think I know that?
“It’s been less than two days,” Jack responds coldly, trying so hard to look him in the eye, to insist on what he’s saying. “You wanna sit there and make problems before they even start?”
It’s clear Robby is getting frustrated.
So, he’s not sure why he’s not storming out and slamming the door on his way.
“I’m trying to make sure you don’t make the biggest mistake in your life.”
“Biggest mistake in my life?” Jack snorts, like he isn’t a widowed war veteran who had dozens of friends die in front of his very eyes. Like he deserves to walk again. “Wow, yeah, okay.”
He knows he’s being unreasonable, and waspish.
But whatever place Robby is trying to reach inside him, Jack’s unable to reach it too.
“I’m not going to say sorry because I have a feeling you’ll punch me in the face,” Robby voices softly, to lighten the mood. It just makes Jack miserable because it’s not like he’s wrong, and—
“If I hurt you, I don’t think I’m coming back from that.”
There’s a croak in his voice like he’s a fish that’s been outta water for too long.
“You can’t hurt me,” Robby assures him, and that’s a scary thought, if the whirlwind that Jack’s become can’t touch him. What kind of pain is Robby feeling that makes that true? “I promise.”
“I…I need…”
He’s breaking down fast. He needs Robby to leave but he might die if he does.
He doesn’t need food. He doesn't need routine. He doesn’t need anything other than—
“I need help.”
The way Robby’s expression softens spears Jack in the heart.
He’s never deserved this care, the kind Robby gives out like a gift.
“I’m here to help you. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You have—you’ve gotta get back to the Emergency Room, you’ve—”
“I shuffled around my schedule,” Robby says as if it’s that simple, and not simply another grenade dropped onto his lap. “I got a few days off. Thought you might like some company.”
“Company is a funny way of putting it.”
“Yeah, I’m more of a nuisance. I know.”
Jack laughs, bowl of soup almost spilling over with how hard he shakes.
“Thank you, Robby.” Now Jack can’t even look him in the eye, feeling himself crack. “I don’t know…all of this is new, and really fucking hard. I don’t think I’ll get my footing for a while.”
“Well, obviously.”
It takes Jack a minute, then he’s grinning.
It’s like the itch in his missing foot momentarily doesn’t exist.
He finishes his soup and they laugh together about unimportant things. New residents causing shit storms, the brand new coffee at that shop they both like tasting like dirt. The weather.
“I got that guest room,” Jack reminds him. “I don’t use it. You can, uh…”
“I won’t overstay my welcome,” Robby says, as a way to assure that he’ll stay as long as he needs him but only until then. Jack wants to tell him he’s got free reign for as long as he wants. He’s used to his wife having that, and doesn’t quite know what to do with her in that position.
“I remember you, dude. Best roommate I ever had,” Jack recalls fondly. “You barely left a tissue in the trash can if you could take it out yourself to keep the space clean. Then there I was.”
“I didn’t even know there was a sock-on-the-door system, that’s how many socks you were using in a week.” Robby chuckles, sinking further into the couch. Jack allows himself to slip into an easy reminiscence too. “God, what was it…blue for threesome, red for headcase, yellow for…”
“Kinky. “
“How did I forget that after walking in on the candy thong thing?”
Robby sighs indignantly and Jack howls.
“No, that was pink. Pink meant she was a romantic. There were extra stakes if you walked in, y’know. Embarrassment, shame. You did walk in on me, Rhonda, and the ball gag, though.”
“I mean, you have to admit, when there was a sock I didn’t recognize, I got curious.”
“Yeah, kind of weird, man. It sort of encouraged you to open the door.”
“I’m still convinced you made up the system yourself.”
“It’s a thing!” Jack scoots an inch closer, grinning. “You’re forgetting plaid.”
“Hmm?”
Robby is being evasive. Interesting.
“That was when I had a dude over.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about that.”
Jack knows better than that. Robby most certainly did not forget.
“I did have to create that rule myself, because the creator of the original sock system was not nearly as open-minded as I was in my youth,” Jack explains, setting down his empty bowl.
“What, bicurious?” Robby snorts.
“If you have to label it, there’s nothing curious about my sexuality.”
Robby meets his eyes, wry and slightly off-put.
“Because you are…”
Jack squints, yet waiting for Robby to put two and two together doesn’t pan out. Robby continues staring at him with guileless confusion.
“Bisexual.”
He doesn’t like to say it but Robby’s forced his hand. And hey, it’s not like Robby doesn’t know. Even if the name of the label evaded him. They spent three years of medical school as roommates, and Jack used that plaid sock dozens of times.
“Right, so…that.”
There’s a way Robby says it.
Hold on.
“Mike.” Jack pales, unsure of himself. “Did you think I was—you thought it was a phase?”
“No?” Robby scratches his beard nervously. “Not a phase, really. Just, uh, well. I thought you were getting creative with the socks, just for fun. You know to tease me for…well, it was a different time.”
Hold the fuck on.
“You thought I got in bed naked with our classmates for a prank?”
“I wasn’t looking at who was in your bed!”
“You saw me with Neil!”
“I saw you with Jacob, wait, you slept with Neil?” Robby amends frantically, “Neil’s gay?!”
Jack rocks back into a sitting position, realizing he’d been cornering an increasingly anxious Robby into the back of the couch, and following a deep sigh, releases a succinct, “Huh.”
Robby is pinching his brow, struggling to regain his wits.
“Sorry, um, you know I’m cool with it.”
“I know,” Jack mutters, rushed. “I guess.”
He’s just realized he spent most of his adult life thinking his best friend was aware of the whole gay-thing and was thrilled to never bring it up ever again and just learned said friend didn’t know it was a gay-thing at all and thought it was some weird joke. Who the fuck would joke about this?
“No, Christ. I’m sorry I’m an idiot.”
Jack sighs, rubbing his temples.
“You’re not an idiot. You’re just straight.”
“That’s not—” Robby cuts himself off with a strangled noise, gesturing wildly to their dishes. “Know what? We gotta clean this up. Here, I’ll—yeah.” He picks up the bowls and dashes off.
Jack sways on the couch from the new distribution of weight in Robby’s swift departure, watching him go while answers inevitably click into place in his head. He gasps.
Then, lifting himself with his crutch, he races as quick as his one leg can take him into the kitchen. Now Robby’s the one furiously scrubbing all his dishes.
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing, Jack. Seriously. Everything’s good. We’re good.”
“Jesus, Robby. Fucking say it.”
Robby drops the bowl in the sink and it makes a low, metallic thunk.
“You don’t need to feel worse than you already do,” he argues, and fuck, there’s something so heartbroken in Robby’s voice that’s years old, telling Jack he should’ve seen whatever the hell is coming a long time ago. He hobbles closer, not backing down, eyes hard set on his best friend.
“That’s not possible. Talk to me.”
“Back then…I thought you’d found out about me. I thought it was a joke,” Robby explains, expression wavering and threatening to crack. “At my expense. I thought you knew.”
Jack’s heart sinks. Okay, he was wrong.
He does feel worse.
“Knew what?” he asks, not having to.
“That I liked guys. Y’know?”
“And you thought I was making fun of that? That was easier to believe than me sleeping with guys?” Jack feels sick in a way he hasn’t felt since the battlefield. Fuck. “Christ, brother.”
“It was a different time. I’m sure it would’ve been funny to a lot of guys at school.”
“It wouldn’t be to me.” Jack shakes his head, unable to conceive that Robby had this view of him literally up until now. “I’m so fucking sorry you thought that.”
“I didn’t hold it against you, Jack. That’s just how guys treated guys like that. I don’t know.” Robby winces. “Didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t know about me. I thought—anyway.”
“Man, if you were any more deflective you’d be aluminum foil.”
Robby snorts.
"Doesn't matter, right? It was a long time ago.”
“Of course it matters. You thought I was some heartless jock.”
“Never thought you were a jock, Mr. Chess Club.”
Jack cracks a smile.
“You gotta know I love you, man,” he murmurs and Robby’s eyes close briefly before revealing watery orbs, turned from Jack to prevent him from staring. “You big, foul mouthed teddy bear.”
“I love you too,” Robby replies, soft as snow. “You legless idiot.”
“Good talk,” Jack says tightly, forcing a smirk down. “Now I’ll feel less guilty keeping you here as an at-home personal chef.”
“And yoga instructor.”
Jack groans and Robby laughs, following him out of the kitchen.
It’s only been three days, so maybe it’s ok to be as surprised as he is by the sight of Robby’s toothbrush in a cup shouldered up to his own. It’s been a long time since he’s shared a sink.
He can see it from his bed, where the bathroom door is cracked open.
Yes, Robby is staying here at his place, it’s just—the sight actually makes him warm.
It’s been months since he’s felt warm, maybe a year.
He has to kick himself.
The brush isn’t going to stay there and the warm feeling will be gone. Wouldn’t do to go getting attached to this feeling, nor the one he gets from the scent of coffee already made in the kitchen.
He used to be the morning guy between them.
Now, Jack lies in bed and ends up staring at the ceiling for a dreadful chunk of time knowing he’ll inevitably have to haul himself up to don the new leg. He doesn’t like doing it. Doesn’t like the clicks and the straps and the new plastic smell. He likes to procrastinate as much as he can.
“Strap in, or I’ll do it for you,” Robby warns without heat from his bedroom doorway.
Jack rolls over, face first into a pillow, and grumbles a few choice words.
He merely earns a hearty laugh in return.
“Meet me by the treadmill or the coffee is going down the drain.” Robby taps his foot and nods up at the ticking clock. “Chop chop.”
“This is extortion.” Jack grunts and groans, starting to shift instinctively from the threat of taking away his coffee. “You’re squatting in my apartment and still, all you do is abuse me.”
“All I do is keep you moving. You told me you would.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Jack lifts himself up and reaches blindly for his prosthetic while the world blinks into focus. Robby is closer now, hovering at his bedside while he watches him get the prosthetic prepped.
“You giving me a test?”
“Of course not.”
“Stop treating this like a teaching hospital, then.”
“I’m honestly curious if the sutures ortho gave you left an ugly scar.”
The candor of it makes Jack grin.
He wiggles his stump at Robby for fun. Very rarely, it does feel uniquely cool to have nothing there. Almost like he’s wearing a costume. Then he remembers he’ll never be able to walk normally ever again, and this is the last thing from a costume. That’s generally when the itch starts to return, and the end of his stump tingles uncomfortably. Robby surprises him by grabbing it mid-air, with those hands that have always had a precise quality about them that makes Jack want to squirm.
“Hey,” he mumbles, tugging.
Robby holds him steady, and Jack shudders when he rubs a thumb over the scar. It’s not too fresh, but it feels like it is. It shouldn’t feel as sensitive as it does, and yet.
“They didn’t butcher you. That’s good.”
That finger keeps stroking. It’s giving Jack mixed signals.
His stomach twists with pleasure, and that’s just altogether way too confusing.
“Not like anyone but me would care,” Jack gripes, tugging again.
Robby drops his leg to the bed and shrugs.
“I’m not talking aesthetics. I’d like to know if they were being careless with you,” he explains. “You deserve the proper treatment.”
Jack hisses, “Because I’m a veteran?” as he straps on his leg piece.
“Because you’re the best man I know,” Robby murmurs.
Jack doesn’t have an answer to that, so he’s inclined to finish donning his prosthetic. Robby helps him to his feet without asking, and again, he’s glad for the quiet presumption of the action. Even more grateful when Robby lets him get his own footing on the way to the treadmill.
He’d rather die than run right now, but there’s coffee on the line.
He knows what Robby is doing is being a good friend, and when he reaches out, he knows a part of him is thankful. He’s just not sure this is as sustainable as his friend would like to believe it is.
Robby will have to go back to work.
Jack will start to think about all the bad things that have happened again.
The treadmill run is grueling.
His leg aches afterwards, both of them. He almost makes a smart comment about wanting them both amputated instead of the one. It doesn’t sound funny to him even as he thinks it. It just sounds sad. Robby stands by his side the whole run, cracking jokes so he doesn’t give up. Jack doesn’t know what he’d do without him. Probably lose the sensation in his other leg, honestly.
“That’s it! Almost at the finish line,” Robby encourages, locked in on his wristwatch as Jack sweats his way through the last minutes of his routine. “Let’s just pray that potato sack doesn’t break.”
Jack huffs out a breathless laugh.
He’s so exhausted, his throat burns when he speaks.
“If your lanky green bean body was in this sack, it would.”
“Green beans have historically traveled in potato sacks without fail for decades,” Robby aggrandizes, smirking at his watch. He drags out the syllables in his announcement, “And time!”
He flips the off switch on the treadmill for him.
“I despise you. Give me my coffee.”
“And a new episode of the Walking Dead?”
“This is what they call lovebombing.” Jack snakes an arm around Robby’s shoulder and lets him help him off the machine, feeling a bit weak-limbed until he gets his footing on solid ground. The prosthetic bends under him and he tries not to resist its flexibility. “And you know, abusive as it is, I’m going to totally forgive you for the torture you just put me through because of it.”
“Good to know it’s working.”
“Your grandma raised a sicko.”
“Most grandmas do.”
Jack loathes to admit it but he feels less like he’s going to fall over flat on his face as he makes his way to the living room where Robby has stashed a significantly sized thermos of coffee.
The exercises are helping. Robby is helping.
Jack just hopes he can come out on the other side mentally there, as well as physically.
The pain of losing a limb is like no other.
When it happened, pain had overridden everything Jack had ever learned. All he felt was pain, and even worse, loss. He could not reconcile the pain of something not even there anymore.
The screaming was one thing, though actually feeling the phantom agony on top of the bursting veins at the amputation site, it was just—not something anyone should have to go through.
Let alone live to tell the tale.
Whatever dream he’s having, Jack is re-experiencing that pain.
He must wake up screaming because Robby is instantly at his side, gripping his skull and trying frantically to get through to him. All Jack can hear is the white noise of bombs, the shrill ringing.
“Jack!” suddenly rushes through his daze, clear as a bell. Robby’s concerned expression fades into a sharp image, crushing in on him. “Jack, it’s me. You’re fine, you’re alive. You’re okay!”
Jack bursts into tears from the flip of reality.
That’ll be embarrassing later, he thinks, as he’s tucked into Robby’s chest. Right now, he’s not connected to that part of his brain. Right now, he’s clawing at Robby and muttering unintelligible things, begging even, for something. He’s not sure. He just knows he’ll die if Robby lets go.
“Shh. I’ve got you, brother,” Robby soothes. “I know, I know.”
Nails scrape through his hair, tracing across his nape.
It takes a long time, maybe an hour. After the crying subsides, Jack is able to return to himself by focusing on the mesmerizing rhythm of his hands, the relaxing pouring over him from them.
He doesn’t know why Robby stayed.
It’s been so long and the front of his t-shirt is soaked with tears and fuck, snot probably. Jack feels horrible, and guilty, and angry. There’s nothing he can do but feel these emotions and stew in them, knowing he’s put them out in the open. Knowing he’s brought Robby down with him.
“Hey,” Robby whispers, gentle as ever. “You with me?”
Jack is certainly with him.
He’s halfway into his lap, arms tucked into his chest like a child. He’s not even inclined to move, or speak, but he knows it isn’t socially acceptable to do this for much longer than a panic attack.
So, he moves, or tries to.
Robby holds him tight and shakes his head, so that’s that.
He moves his hands from his nap to his back, dragging knuckles over his spine.
“This part of your yoga instruction?” Jack croaks with barely shrouded misery, bunching the fabric of his friend’s shirt in his fingers. It grounds him.
“Not exactly what I had in mind.”
A shuddering gasp of breath wracks his whole body and more tears escape.
“Fuck, god I’m so fucking—I can’t stop. Fuck, oh fuck.”
Robby holds him tighter.
“Okay,” he coaxes Jack closer. “Okay.”
“Tell me what I’m still doing here,” he whispers, trying not to break more as he emits the words. He somehow keeps it together, keeps threading the sharp needle through the weak spots and pulls them into seams. “Tell me why I didn’t die out there, Mikey. Why I’m not dead like her.”
Robby’s hands go still, expanding on his back.
“Because I need you.” There’s a hitch in Robby’s breath. “I need you here with me.”
Oh the bastard.
“That’s the one thing I can’t argue with you on,” Jack mutters, not quite the accusation he’s hoping it to be. He curses and remarks, “Congratulations.”
“I’m sorry I’m selfish,” Robby apologizes into his hair, rocking him a little. “I’m so sorry, Jack.” Jack burrows closer, and isn’t embarrassed this time when he feels that same warmth. The one he feels when he sees the two toothbrushes together at his sink. It isn’t paired with guilt either.
“I’m a poor substitute,” Robby murmurs, and neither needs it to be voiced who he’s substituting for.
They stay here for a long time, wrapped in a warm cocoon, nourishing their bond.
Robby stays until the morning creeps in, and after it’s as bright as summer outside. Jack falls asleep in his arms at some point and doesn’t have another nightmare, at least, not today.
He’s up and prepping the yoga mats in Jack’s bedroom when Jack stirs again.
Jack hates this more than the treadmill usually, but he doesn’t voice that. He doesn’t care as much this morning. Something about Robby being there for him last night and voicing why he wants him alive and here. Why he’s doing any of this to keep him functioning at all—it’s changed things a bit. He isn’t waking up with a sense of purposelessness, or survivor’s guilt.
He’s waking up for Robby.
It feels good to have a reason.
It feels like a fresh start.
Maybe one day he’ll wake up for himself, though it’s good to have a stepping stone to that point and not feel like it’s posturing. In a good mood, Jack moves to grab his prosthetic without being nagged into doing it. Robby catches him in his peripheral and visibly attempts to hide his smile.
“Feeling better?” he asks, helping Jack onto the floor. Jack’s wearing his pajama pants and in the back of his mind, knows he’ll have to take them off if he wants to do these yoga positions properly. For now, he gets comfortable on the floor, stretching out his limbs and rubbing at his bad leg.
“Much,” Jack responds, surprising himself. “Itchy though.”
“Huh. Where?”
“Where do you think?” he asks mildly.
“Oh.” Robby stares at Jack’s stump and seems to put two and two together. He’s itching where his phantom foot is, and obviously, where he can’t reach. “I remember this from Psych class.”
“Remember what?”
“Come on, it’s an easy fix.”
Robby nudges him across the floor to sit in front of the ceiling-to-floor mirror Jack installed next to the bathroom a long time ago. It clicks into place and he lets out a disbelieving laugh.
“Mirror therapy? Really?”
“Hey, you’re Mr. Therapy. Not me. This has statistical success, if you recall, so at least try it?”
Jack rolls his eyes and stretches out his in-tact limb, the reflection making it seem like the itchy missing one to his brain. He’s not sure how he can trick his own brain into this when he’s aware of how the trick works, but he reaches down to where the spot on his phantom limb is itching and itches it on the opposite leg, shocked at the almost instant effect. He can feel himself itching the leg he’s actually itching yet, impossibly, he can feel a corresponding touch on his missing limb.
It’s an uncanny feeling.
“I’m eating my words,” he tells Robby, furiously scratching away the itch that’s been bothering him for weeks. “Dude, you have no idea how much this changes the game.”
When he glances away from the mirror to catch Robby scooting closer, the effect of course vanishes. He keeps his eyes trained on the mirror and tries not to doze as he itches and rubs.
“It was honestly a shot in the dark,” Robby admits, placing a hand on Jack’s in-tact leg. He strokes down the length of it to his foot and Jack yelps, jerking back from the feathery touch.
“Whoa, sorry! Did that hurt?”
“Tickles, dude,” Jack grumps. “Like two-fold.”
Robby grins. “Sorry.”
He’s definitely not this time.
Jack's gotta make him move on before he gets any sadistic ideas.
“Let’s get this over with.”
They realign themselves on the yoga mats, Robby busying himself pulling up the proper post-transtibial yoga routine on his phone while Jack stretches himself out and resigns himself to the duty of stripping off his long, dumb, pajama pants. They get stuck around his calves as he awkwardly maneuvers around, flailing, material also catching on his underwear and pulling.
“Fuck, this’d be easier naked,” he comments.
He doesn’t mean anything by it.
Robby doesn’t look up from his phone, reading-glasses low on his nose when he—Jack knows enough to know he doesn’t mean anything by this either—responds, “Then get naked.”
Jack hoists a brow at him because, regardless of intention, he gets a great idea.
He shucks his boxers off, casting himself into nudity.
With the toes of his other foot, tosses all his clothing to the other side of the room.
That’ll show Robby not to be a smartass, Jack muses. It’s not like he’s ever harbored a lot of shame when it comes to showing skin. He’s a hot ticket after all. And it’s nothing Robby hasn’t seen in communal showers or their dorm room. Sure, this is a fairly new context, however.
Robby’s phone slips out of his hand when he looks up.
“Problem?”
He knows he’s painted him into a corner. If Robby confirms there is a problem, he’ll be retracting his smart-assery. And boy, is that just ultimately unacceptable to Dr. Bitchavich.
“No problem,” Robby eventually manages. He is staring Jack in the eye, which is rare. He is keeping them trained on him so he doesn’t steal a look at what’s lower, which makes Jack smile.
“Then let’s shake a leg?” Jack grins wider. “Get it?”
“I get it,” Robby deadpans.
Body vibrating a little, he still manages to grab his phone to glance at the list he made and then sits it down, just as shaky. “Um,” he clears his throat, repeatedly. “Let’s, uh, start with this one.”
“Hold on, lemme get my prosthetic.”
They start after it’s donned.
Robby is the first to do the pose, stretching a leg out behind him to pull at with the opposite arm. It shows off the line of his body beautifully. He’s got a t-shirt and boxers on, not having bothered to dress before starting this. Jack thinks his own nudity couldn’t be seen as no more obscene than the speckling of course hair peaking out from the protrusion of Robby’s belly, when he’s stretched at full length. There’s a blush that follows that trail, pinkening the hidden V of his hips.
“Looking spry, Mikey,” Jack teases, in a lounging position.
Something about feeling revitalized this morning is helping him tease his friend without a cloud of guilt overhanging. It’s worth it for the scowl he gets in return.
“If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
“Oh, I’m serious as a heart attack.”
Jack molds himself into the pose, wincing through it as he grabs for his prosthetic and hinges his stretch from there, pulling at the close-toed shape of his fake foot. He feels something pop in his back and groans, satisfied. There are upsides to this, he admits, even if it’s immensely boring.
Another upside is the way Robby is staring at him.
Jack puffs his chest out a bit more and breathes, “Do I pass this one, Doctor?”
Robby doesn’t answer for a minute, and isn’t that interesting.
“Yes.” His voice is coarse, sounding used. “Hold it for another five minutes.”
“You’d like that wouldn’t you.”
Robby’s eyes narrow. He grips his phone tighter.
This time, instead of doing the pose himself, Robby shows him one on his phone after the five minutes are up. Jack releases the hold, and his breath, panting as he tries to take in the new pose.
It looks harder.
He’s already tired of this.
Still, he gets into the pose without complaining, holding his weight up on one arm and stretching towards the ceiling as he points both leg and prosthetic towards the opposite wall, in a long line.
This pose of course puts his cock on an even more obscene display.
Robby isn’t looking at him.
“How am I supposed to know if I’m doing it right,” Jack drawls, rolling his neck to work out the kinks, “if you’re not even going to look at me?”
“I looked.”
“And once was enough?”
“Not nearly.” That gives Jack pause because, well, what? Is Robby being serious? Some of Jack’s humor dies in his throat and spirals over whether Robby is flirting back or not. “Happy?”
“I’d be happier if you got over here and showed me what I’m doing wrong.”
He’s not sure he’s doing anything wrong.
It doesn’t matter.
He can see the effect his words have; a shiver down Robby’s spine and the languid fluttering of his lashes as he sets his phone down and forces himself to look. In an instant, swallowing hard.
“Well?” Jack prods, a thrill rushing through him as he realizes Robby is going to give in.
Robby inches forward, then his hands are on Jack’s hips.
He’s twisting his whole body to stretch at a sort of corkscrew angle, if Jack has to put a term to it. He’s not really paying attention because those large hands are spanning almost the entire circumference of his waist and as a man that shouldn’t be as cripplingly hot as it is, but fuck.
Robby doesn’t lift his hands off him when he’s got him in the position he wants.
He simply says, “That feel right?”
“Define ‘right’ Mike,” Jack chuckles, biting his lip against a moan that wants to fall off his tongue. Robby’s hands are trailing down just a centimeter or so, dry and perfectly calloused, clenching with light pressure barely noticeable to anyone but Jack.
“You’re not in pain?”
“I wouldn’t say pain,” Jack murmurs, eyes glittering.
Robby frowns harder.
“What are we doing?” he demands softly, almost upset.
Jack can’t have that, let alone the doubt coagulating in his gaze. So, he leans forward, till they’re nose to nose, and Robby’s eyes are saucer wide, then he speaks in a low, tantalizing voice.
“You know exactly what we’re doing.”
Robby gives him a look that seems to say just like that? After years of not knowing whether the other guy would be interested. Of Robby thinking he was straight, of Jack being emotionally unavailable. And yeah, maybe their flaws aren’t fixed overnight, but maybe this can be as simple as Jack leaning in that extra inch and brushing desperate lips over Robby’s surprised, parted ones.
There’s a gasp between them, then Robby is pushing forward too.
Jack lets his moan loose as his tongue slips along the seam of his friend’s mouth, the beard scratching along wet edges of skin. Christ, it’s been so long since he’s ever wanted anyone this much.
So damn long.
His cock is filling fast, and his limbs are shaking from habitually keeping the yoga pose up. Robby assures he lets the pose go, pulling his entire body into his lap with a throaty growl.
“Fuck,” Jack breathes, a laugh choking in his lungs as he’s rearranged. He can’t even get the proper joke about yoga instructors out. “Hah—you’re—nevermind, mm.”
Robby’s beard scrapes at his throat as he sucks kisses into the column there, leaving marks no doubt. Jack lets himself be manhandled, making a soft noise when Robby’s hands trail from his hips to his ass, fingers dipping into the crease, teasing the feathery, hidden hairs he finds there.
The assured touches, and wet lips on his skin, makes Jack shiver.
“God, tell me to stop,” Robby begs suddenly, voice strained with wrought emotion. “If you don’t want this, please. Tell me now.”
“I would’ve never told you to stop,” Jack whispers the secret in his ear, mouthing hot air along the blushing lobes. “And I’m certainly not gonna do it now.”
Robby groans, swerving them so they hit the yoga mat. Or rather, Jack’s spine hits it, subsequently getting covered by a bouldering male body seeking release. Jack laughs and meets him in the middle with another wet and pent up kiss, pushing every desire he’s ever had for his best friend to the forefront. Robby takes it all in stride, lifting both legs around his own waist.
“Even when I thought you were joking,” Robby rumbles into the skin of his torso, sinking lower to plaster frantic kisses all along the descending line of his body. “Seeing you with those other boys…fuck.” His lips are back on Jack’s, not giving him a chance to answer or add his two cents.
“You think I’d have been fucking around with Neil if I knew I could have you?” Jack grins, toothy and wide when he sees a dark warning in Robby’s eyes. “Have you seen you from med school?”
“Why didn’t you ask then?”
Jack gulps down a weird feeling, and shrugs.
“You didn’t invent insecurities alright?” Jack averts his eyes. “Your friendship is important to me.” Robby tangles their fingers together to reassure him and his smile wavers when he does.
“We’ll always be brothers, first and foremost.”
Jack howls, nudging his cock into the bulge growing in Robby’s boxers.
“Some brother you are!”
Robby blushes harder, tucking his face into Jack’s neck.
“Come closer and show me some of that brotherly love,” Jack continues his psychological warfare, and Robby groans indignantly, making him laugh again.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Aren’t you glad I came back from the war as a disgusting, one-footed freak?”
“I’m glad you came back at all,” Robby says quietly, shoving Jack’s hands above his head when he’s intertwined both with his own. Jack’s breath hitches and he gazes wondrously up at him.
Robby has never stopped being beautiful.
“This part of the yoga routine?”
“Will you ever be serious?”
“When I’m dead.”
“Then I guess I’ll learn to live with it,” Robby says, like a promise, swooping down to kiss him again. This kiss is harder, more passionate. It has Jack’s toes curling and his mind going blank.
Kisses peck down his chest, over sensitive thighs.
Jack snaps back to reality like lightning when Robby’s lips graze the tip of his cock. He looks down just in time to see him take the tip into his mouth, suck around the frenulum intently.
He looks just as good like this as he always expected he would.
He isn’t expecting a wet finger to circle his hole.
It has him falling against the yoga mat when it slips inside, prosthetic leg kicking outward from the pleasure. At least some things don’t change after an amputation, he thinks with distant humor. “I should’ve gotten naked at university more often,” he jokes through his own noises.
Robby’s practiced finger finds his prostate with ease and Jack is moaning at the ceiling like a paid whore. Let it be known he is not the type of man to act reserved when it comes to sex.
“Mike.”
“Fuck, you look good like that,” Robby confesses, gnawing at the inside of his trembling knee, where his leg meets prosthetic. He curls his finger, stroking against it in firm, confident rubs.
Precum leaks from his cock right onto Robby’s tongue where he starts mouthing at the head again. He’s driving him crazy not sucking his cock outright, teasing it with lips and tongue and whispering nothingness into the sensitive skin of the base as he rubs his prostate even harder.
“You’re fucking killing me.”
“No, I’m giving you physical therapy.”
Jack’s laugh curtails into a moan when Robby starts sucking him.
“I’m not gonna last, man, it’s literally been a year. I think. Fuck.”
He hasn’t even masturbated.
Hasn’t felt alive enough in a while.
Jack realizes he’s kept his hands where Robby initially left them, plastered to either side of his head on the floor. Trembling, he unsticks them from the mat and moves them to Robby’s hair, tugging what’s left of it with harsh insistence. Traces the shape of his skull with his nails.
Robby moans in response, swallowing him deeper.
That sinful goddamn beard scrapes at the sensitive, quivering skin of his stomach, and when a second saliva-slick knuckle grinds against his twitching rim where another of Robby’s fingers is buried, he starts to come. It bursts from the stroking of his prostate, out of his thighs, forming a fire in his chest that sets his entire system aflame and has him tensing up and spurting thickly.
The orgasm has him twitching and fighting to breathe.
Robby sucks kisses over his pulsing cock and thrusts his finger against his engorged prostate to make it last, completely outperforming any partner Jack has ever entertained. He’s ruined now.
He tells him that.
“Fuck you and your stupid fucking magic fingers.”
The high, breathless pitch of his voice post-orgasm is embarrassing and doesn’t contain the effect he’s aiming for. Robby’s smirk confirms it.
Robby’s fingers leave his body although his mouth keeps making love to every inch of sweat-sheen, flushed skin, around his hips and ribs, until he finds one of his perked nipples and kisses it thoroughly. Jack watches him reverently, swimming with endorphins, not yet aware of how much come is splattered everywhere, from Robby’s chin, to the yoga mat, to his own belly.
He’s just watching him, wondering when he got even sexier than he already was in school. It’s nice to have shallow thoughts like this, and forget what he thought would be eternally lingering nightmares.
“Sorry I would’ve given you two fingers, but I guess you can’t hold that pose for long,” Robby teases, hesitating over kissing him. Jack doesn’t care that his mouth was just on his cock; he surges up into a kiss as an answer, and Robby wraps a hand around the back of his neck tenderly.
Swiping up some of the mess from his own cock, uses it as lube to get a good grip on Robby's erection, slipping his hand under the hem of his boxers and not even bothering to move them aside as he starts stroking inside the hot, cramped space. Robby’s hips stutter as he gasps, loud.
“How long can you hold it?” he murmurs, a threat.
“Longer than you I bet,” Robby grits out, eyes closed.
He thrusts into Jack’s damp fist, purpling cockhead peaking from the hem.
With his other hand, he rakes seductively through the hair on Robby’s chest—or the hair he can reach with his damn t-shirt rucked out of place—which is something he’s always wanted to do.
When Robby’s balance wobbles, and he moves to redistribute some of his weight by lowering himself closer to Jack and the floor, Jack squeezes warningly around the base of his dick.
Robby freezes. Jack tips his head up.
“Nuh-uh,” he tells him. “Stay where you are or I stop.”
“What the fuck?” Robby laughs dryly. He stays put though, of course he does. Too worried Jack will make good on his promise. “You’re evil.”
“Yep.” Jack leans in to lick over the seam of Robby’s lips. At the same time, cranks his fist over the tip of his weeping cock, massaging more liquid out of it with the palm of his hand. “I am.”
“Jesus, Jack.”
Robby grunts, pleasure spiking up. Jack follows him with his hand as he sways, trying to regain his footing on the floor at the weird angle he’s in, holding himself a foot or so above the floor.
“I’m gonna fall over,” Robby warns, voice tight with slight panic.
“You’re not going to,” Jack whispers, kissing him. “You’re gonna stay right there.”
“You vengeful little shit.”
Jack lifts his good leg over Robby’s waist, pushing down on his back to make it harder for him as he increases the pace on his cock, resorting to repetitive, root-to-base thrusts of his fist now.
“Fuck off,” hisses Robby.
“Not until you come all over me,” Jack taunts, really jacking him now. “Come on, Mikey.”
Robby screws his eyes shut, concentrating harder than he does at work.
Jack is so in love with him, it makes him want to punch something.
Well, isn’t that a revelation.
“I want you to,” he continues, velvety encouragement, “I wanna feel you throbbing in my hand as you come so hard you fucking collapse. Do it, come on. Come on, Mike. Yeah, that’s it.”
A moan tears out of Robby’s throat as his cock jerks and starts to come, spitting out white along Jack’s knuckles, that remain flying over his shaft in a frenzy. He slows just enough to coax him through the orgasm, really pumping him for all that he’s worth. Robby only stubbornly falls at the tail end of it, letting out a gust of air as he crushes Jack’s body with his weight, panting and heaving for air.
“Hey there,” Jack wheezes, chortling when he finds Robby is impossible to shove.
“Hey immovable object,” Jack mutters, continuing to elbow and shove at him. Robby grunts, acknowledging that he’s at least alive. Jack shoves harder. “Meet unstoppable force.”
Robby snorts back and rolls over onto his back.
His cock is half out of his shorts and he’s red in the face, glowing from the orgasm. Jack grins down at him, overcome with the mere obscenity of what they’ve just committed to together.
“My leg hurts like a motherfucker, so I’m not sure this yoga routine is doing its job,” Jack tells him, pawing around the drawer he can reach for pain meds. Robby bursts out into laughter.
“Yeah?” he asks, giddy.
Jack pops the correct dosage, and sorts away his pills.
“Yeah, but hey, maybe we can take it to the bed next time?”
“I’ll see if that’s allowed in the manual.”
“Not that I’m saying yoga with a happy ending isn’t something I’m up for,” Jack postulates, creeping two fingers up Robby’s thigh, sneaking playfully under his boxers. “But I might prefer the classic ‘massage’ with a happy ending instead. Next time. If you’re taking orders.”
“You want fries with that?” Robby cracks hoarsely.
“Seasoned, waffle.”
“No way. Plain, crinkle-cut.”
“You’re fucking sick.”
“You’re the one who likes to make threats during sex.”
“It gets you hot,” Jack argues. “How was it, then? Sex with an amputee?”
“You’re not my first.”
There’s an actual spark of annoyance in Jack’s chest.
Robby notices it and naturally makes fun of him.
“Man, you are unreal. You really think you’re God’s gift huh?”
“Can’t think that if I don’t believe in God.”
Robby’s smile wavers. He tilts his head curiously and asks,
“When did that happen?”
Jack shrugs, getting his elbows under him so he can reach his own underwear. He slips on his boxers despite the mess drying on his skin. He can wash up later. Right now, he wants coffee.
“I was in a trench somewhere overseas. Couldn’t tell you when.” Jack reaches over to adjust Robby’s clothes, tugging down the shirt over his ridiculously hot chest before he gets ideas. Like licking through the come decorating the fine, dark hair there. “Seemed clear to me then.” When he was ankle deep in the blood of his friends, red and brown blending together from the rain.
He doesn’t need to explain.
Robby gets it.
Even if Robby is forever going to look to God for answers.
Jack knows he ran up that bill in Heaven a long time ago and if there is a God, he saw the charges and simply turned him away. Who wouldn’t?
He just hopes if God exists, he’ll be there for Robby.
Maybe it’s the first non-selfish thought he's had in a while so when Robby asks, quiet and vulnerable, “Was this…me taking advantage of you?”
Jack has to answer starkly honest.
“No.” Jack turns Robby’s head with two fingers. “You make me better.”
Robby looks relieved.
He should’ve known, and it's not surprising he doesn't, but if Jack has to keep reminding him, he will. And he’ll be there for him when things get dark. He won’t let him slip into bad dreams without him at his side.
“You gonna stay?” he asks Robby, for the first time, feeling he deserves the answer.
Robby helps him off the floor and Jack isn't irritated this time, when he eases him slowly to his feet, prosthetic and in-tact alike. He doesn't shrug off the helpful touch at his arm, or snarl at the doting glimmer in his round, sad eyes. Jack's always been startled by that gaze, and nothing's changed. He's still under their insistent, devoted spell.
His voice is rough, and yet so familiar when he tells Jack,
“As long as you need me.”